Most likely FTP (and other) plugins will improve vastly when Jon provides sidebar API hooks. At the moment, SFTP has two workflows, one which uses a remote->local dir branch sync allowing sidebar browsing by adding the local folder Sublime's "add folder" hook, and the other which allows direct file editing, navigating files and folders using Sublime's pop-up panels - a less-than ideal interface for such activities.

For users who like working in the mirrored local branch approach, that's fine, but for direct FTP workflow it's clunky for users who come from other editors. I expect that upcoming releases of Sublime will provide sidebar access in the API, and I'm guessing that at around the same time a new release of SFTP will appear to unify the interface of these two workflows. Just a guess tho